Menzies’ political beliefs still ring true, 80 years on

Eighty years ago, a federal backbencher gave a radio address about the “Forgotten People”.

Robert Menzies was in the political wilderness, forced to resign from the prime ministership the year before after losing the confidence of his Coalition partner, the Country Party. His United Australia Party was in disarray. The centre-right of politics was disparate, disorganised and deflated. Sounds eerily familiar.

All up, Menzies gave 105 addresses over the radio from 1942 to 1944. This was the pre-television era, when radio was an important source of entertainment, so from the longevity of the series and the prime-time slot of 9.15pm we can assume many people tuned in for his broadcasts.

The Forgotten People broadcasts were Menzies’ attempt to summarise his political philosophy, to deal with the issues with which Australia was grappling, most confronting of which was World War II, and eventually to create a new political movement of the centre-right, the Liberal Party of Australia, in 1944.

For those who still ascribe to the Menzian tradition and desire to emulate its success, what are the lessons for today we can draw from Menzies and his Forgotten People broadcasts? Stand up for a clear set of values, be distinct from your rivals and be progressive for women.

What Menzies identified in his Forgotten People broadcasts was a set of timeless values. It wasn’t good enough for politicians merely to manage a country according to the whims of vested interests. It was imperative that politicians clearly stood for something. For Menzies, this meant eschewing the identity politics of class war, which he saw as unbecoming of a progressive Australia. This was a clear difference to his political rivals in Labor.

Menzies’ values coalesced around the individual, a person who was ambitious, independent and moral. Identity politics was anathema to Menzies. His pitch was distinctly liberal with its emphasis on individualism and the home, as much it was broad and aspirational. He was uninterested in the “petty gossip of the so-called fashionable suburbs” and deliberately addressed his broadcasts to those in the middle.

Uniquely, Menzies also focused on the place of women in society.

His pitch was of its era but was progressive for the time, particularly when it came to the role of women in society and in politics. Speaking in 1943, Menzies said: “Of course women are at least the equals of men. Of course there is no reason why a qualified woman should not sit in parliament or on the bench or in professorial chair, or preach from the pulpit, or, if you like, command an army in the field. No educated man today denies a place or career to a woman just because she is a woman.” He went on to win more female votes than his Labor opponents time and time again.

For Menzies, the home – in its material, human and spiritual sense – was fundamentally important.

This stood in contrast to Labor’s pitch to workplace conditions when most women were not employed. Menzies’ new party, the Liberal Party of Australia, gave equal party roles to women and men. Homes material meant Menzies understood that owning one’s home gave people a “stake in the country”. Home ownership generated a sense of national pride and patriotism springing from a desire to protect one’s home. Menzies knew the home was “the foundation of sanity and sobriety; it is the indispensable condition of continuity; its health determines the health of society as a whole”.

This was the case in 1942 and is still the case 80 years on.

Homes human related to the next generation, our children.

While often credited to US president John F. Kennedy, it was Menzies who first said the great question for parents was not “How can I qualify society to help my (child)?” but “How can I qualify my (child) to help society?” Instilling in our kids a sense of aspiration, hard work and frugality and educating them to be engaged citizens is still essential for Australia’s progress and our democracy.

Homes spiritual meant pushing against the all-encompassing state. Parents should rear children to have a “fierce independence of spirit”. Menzies was aiming to create a new political movement, one that could challenge its ideological opponents in Labor who favoured greater state control. It is perhaps one reason Menzies appealed to the grandfather of one of the newly elected teal candidates, Percy Spender. In 1937, it was Spender who won the seat of Warringah as an independent, beating the UAP’s Archdale Parkhill. A year later, Spender joined the UAP but said he would always “stand for independent expression of thought and action … and still act as (his) conscience dictates”.

Spender went on to become a key figure in the newly formed Liberal Party in 1944 and held the external affairs portfolio under Menzies. People such as Spender who valued independence of mind and spirit followed Menzies because he inspired them. His leadership was the secret sauce of political success for 18 years. A lesson for today.

By Georgina Downer

Georgina Downer is chief executive of the Robert Menzies Institute.

Originally published in The Australian, 28 May 2022